


Another X

by Rennll



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alien Speak, Conversations, Creepy, Flowers, Gen, Headcanon, Hollow Bastion | Radiant Garden, Human Experimentation, Imprisonment, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I, Puppy Therapy in the Name of Evil, Skuld Is Subject X (Kingdom Hearts), Worldbuilding, too soft for canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23792155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rennll/pseuds/Rennll
Summary: Their secrets are suffocated by the darkness; nobody can bring everything into the light.A less dramatic summary is: A day at the castle, and a conversation that spans from names to flowers.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

“You will have to talk to the girl.”  
The snarl cut through the calm of his study, as pleasant to the ear as the scraping of a knife against brick. Xehanort had picked up on the visitor’s boiling temper from the doorknob being turned with more force than finesse and sharp inhales and exhales through the nose. He recognised Even by the sound of his feet stepping over the red carpet. Even had the broadest step of any person he knew, akin to swinging himself forward when he walked, and his tall frame bellied such little weight that he had to put in considerable effort whenever he stomped to convey his anger, or it wouldn’t be loud enough for anyone to notice.  
Because it was Even, Xehanort did not immediately look up from his desk, like he’d been forced to do if it had been Ansem’s visiting. For a moment he had been convinced that it had to be the latter and his shoulders had tensed, only to relax back again when he understood that it was the former. Funny that it would ever come a time when one of Even’s angry visits would make him feel relief.  
While he didn’t have the authority to ignore Even forever as the person in question planted himself in front of his desk, he allowed himself to pen down a couple more of the spring flood of thoughts miring his head.  
Yesterday he’d been too upset, his latest conversation with the king having wrought up a plethora of frustrations, to sink into the meditative state of focus that let him parse through the ideas in his mind as methodically as a calculator. Now, after a calm nights sleep had settled his mind, his fingers itched in annoyance at being interrupted, though was careful to keep impatiens from his face.  
“Even,” he greeted.  
As he put his eyes on him, he noted the black protective cloak that hung like a loose, mamba skin over Even’s shoulders, a clue as to where he had been before storming into his office; confirmed by the blue folders carried beneath the stick thin arm, journals which Xehanort knew belonged to the patients in the dungeons.  
Moving his paper – speculative formula fighting for space on around the sketch of a heart – over to the growing tower to his left and folding his hands:  
“I assume you are talking about subject X,“ Xehanort said  
A nod, his lips pursed white. Some toxic comment was likely fighting to get out, restricted out of consideration that the object of scorn was a young lady.  
With a sigh Xehanort pushed his chair away from the desk. His legs cracked in relief at being moved. As if spurred on by the feedback from them, his whole body begun aching with the reminder that it too would like to vacate this seat soon, cold and uncushioned, since soft chairs made him drowsy and he felt aversion to softness overall, occasionally sleeping on the floor on a blanket instead of on his maddeningly cushy bed.  
“I worked in the dungeon yesterday. Should you really demand that I’ll spend more than my allotted time down there?”  
“It’s only the one patient,” Even huffed. “I know for a fact that you jump at every opportunity to spend more than your allotted time with X.”  
True, Xehanort reflected, though he wouldn’t jump up at the table and do a jig because Even was shoving more work onto him. If he and X had been fighting, the girl was likely not in the best of moods, and would not be as complacent as the papers he was currently filling with words.  
Although reasoning this, his fingers had gone from itching to resume his writing, to cramping as if realizing that they had been pushed too hard and beginning a proletarians’ protest.  
“Fine”, he said.  
“If it’s you she might be easier to handle,” Even said.  
The acknowledgement brought a grin luring behind Xehanort carefully blank expression.  
Even seldom implied that the younger scientist was more capable than him at anything, although claiming to handle people better than him hardly sounded impressive. Likely, Even secretly wished that X would receive sedatives in her food like the rest of the patients, her eyes too observant and her taunts cutting too close for a man with pride sculptured out of crystal glass. He was slumbing his shoulders now, exhaling in what could only be relief.  
“You’ll be doing fine with her. Just fine, and I have seen to the rest of them,” he said, stepped forward, pulled out one of the blue folders from beneath his arm, bony fingers finding the correct one without the need for eyes to check – not the hardest of feats considering how much thicker X’s was compared to the rest – and deposited it on the desk, while showing only marginal care not to scatter the paperwork.  
As Xehanort suppressed the urge to glare, Even had already spun around, likely counting the seconds that he lagged behind schedule. His hectic gait only brought him to the other side of the door, as Xehanort barely had the time to start sorting his paper when a crash came from the corridor outside. The unabashed sound of hollering laughter followed, accompanied by the spitting fury of Even’s cursing and metal banging against the ground, then Even slammed the door open, cornflower hair dripping wet and jaw clenched so hard it looked like he would crush it. A pile of long ears, black eyes and fluffy blue fur was clutched at the end of his outstretched arm. Behind Even Xehanort could see a bucket rolling on the floor.  
“Also, how many times have I told you to keep your pest in check,” Even said, voice a trembling combination of anger and ice water.  
The referred to pest clipped his ears in annoyance, though mirth still shone from his whole expression. He reached out a clawed paw and waved at Xehanort, opening a broad mouth filled with sharp teeth.  
“Goohd morhing Teha,” he said, words pushed out like thick goblets of syrup.  
“Good morning Stitch,” Xehanort replied with a nod and an acute awareness of Even’s face turning wine red. “Even does not appreciate you playing pranks on him.”  
“Prakatua?” Stitch said pointing a claw at himself in feign confusion, eyes made large and oblivious.  
“Do not act innocent”, Even exclaimed, throwing Stitch down to the floor with a force he otherwise only directed towards lab equipment that refused to work for him.  
More durable than your average catalyst, Stitch landed nimbly on his feet, babbling usetedly. His anger seemed a little thing in the face of the other’s seething visage, as Even was clearly having a stressful day. .  
“ Whatever you try to say in your defence …” he snarled. “It doesn’t make you the victim here. It makes you … More of a pest, that is what it makes you.”  
Knowing that this confrontation would end with Stitch grabbing his desk and chucking it at Even, Xehanort coughed to gain the latter’s attention.  
“Do you remember what happened last time you called Stitch a pest? If you get thrown out of a window again, you might not be so lucky as to only fall from the first floor. I’ll speak to Stitch about this. In private, if you please.”  
His tone edged the last three words. Even hesitated, perhaps remembering the time Stitch grabbed his ankles, lifted him off the ground and tossed him out of the castle as if he was made out of paper, though Xehanort knew that what really made Even pale was the angry spark in his eyes.  
“You do so,” Even said, relaxing his shoulders with what seemed like a hefty amount of effort.  
Stitch blew a rassberry at him as he turned around to exit the room, earning one last poignant glare, before Even disappeared mumbling about insolent monsters, that he would have to change clothes and and how much of this wasted could have been used for research – Yadda yadda.  
“Even blacka,” Stitch said, throwing a narrowed look towards the entrance, before turning and giving Xehanort an expectant grin.  
“A solid seven out of ten,” Xehanort responded to him while stashing his papers into a cupboard below his desk. “Extra points for how quickly you managed to set up the trap to take him unawares. I also appreciate that you contented yourselves with water and not more unsavory substances. We can’t have a head scientist confined the showers all day. What I don’t understand is why you feel the need get angry when he lashes out. Did you expect him to enjoy getting drenched?”  
A shrill giggle came out of Stitch, who skittered on all fours across the ground and up on the desk like a spider, making no difference between plain or vertical surfaces.  
“Sketta ma’joka”.  
“Sadly that doesn’t surprise me; Even has always been better at handling reactive substances than people. Your respective personalities also easily clash with each other.”  
“Icka ma, Braigu siva.”  
“Now I don’t know why Braig would be into the idea of turning you into a fur ascot. Perhaps he feels that you threaten his position as Hollow Bastion’s resident prankster.”  
“Scuba no.”  
“Indeed, Braig does not know when he is fighting a losing battle – No thank you; I can sort these papers out on my own.”  
Stitch, who had spontaneously grown an additional pair of arms in order to assist him with sorting and stashing away papers – a task the creature could finish on seven seconds at minimum and he wanted to beat his own record – looked at Xehanort with pusslement while he struggled to press down the arcs in a cupboard which sorely needed to be cleared out for the second time this month.  
If he told Stitch that he was working on something classified, Xehanort knew that he would get curious, then no matter how thick a vault he stashed the research behind the blue creature would read it, and comprehend it which was the problematic part. Locking the cupboard with a key which hang on a silver chain around his neck, wouldn’t stop someone who really wanted to know his secrets, but still managed to relieve the nettle of paranoia.  
“I’m going down to visit X,” he told Stitch, counting on his friend being distracted as easily as a cat with a ball of paper on string. “Since Even has taken care of all of the others, we can stretch the appointment out.”  
Stitch’s black eyes lighted up and he made a happy garbling sound, jumping up and down on the desk and clapping his hands. Seeing the display, Xehanort couldn’t help but feel that a a bit giddy worked its way over to him.  
“We’ll go see her together then.”  
After winning the battle against limited storage space, Xehanort walked up to a row of knobbs beside the door where his own black coat hung, beside a wool sweater of unassuming brown color and a lab coat.  
Dressing into the gear was a chore, pants needing to exchanged and unwieldy leather conquered, a process complicated by Stitch who decided to jump onto the coattail and swing back and forth, laughing hysterically when Xehanort swiped around in his attempts to pull his arms through the fabric.  
Stitch loved the coat. Since the material was made to resist both magical and physical tear, he could climb up Xehanort’s back without worrying that his crooked claws would pierce the material. As Xehanort grabbed the brown satchel containing the equipment he would need, Stitch was already sitting on his shoulder like an ornament, head turning in every direction as he took in his surroundings from the higher vantage point.  
After having locked his study, Xehanort begun the journey through the long hallways, soon leaving the area where people had their private accommodations and veering onto a path that much like the main artery in a body’s bloodstream, connected to every nook and cranny in the castle. Also like a bloodstream, it enjoyed heavy traffic.  
“Look out!”  
Xehanort ducked, just fast enough to avoid what felt like a bullet passing above his head. The long silvery tresses of his were not as quick. His hiss of pain mingled with the bullet’s shocked outcry as it plunged into a net of hair, and tugged violently to get out on the other side without getting tangled.  
“Very sorry.”  
He looked up at the figure who had nearly uprooted his haircut. She had turned upside down, no larger than a girl’s doll, looking back at him with her brown hair hanging down as she floated in the air. One blue and one green eye blinked.  
“Aren’t you that mystery man?”  
Xehanort was given no time to respond, nor ask what the sparkling object she held in her arms was.  
“Stop jewel thief !”  
Xehanort looked behind his shoulder, spotting the fuming captain of the scouting division, Simmi, fly towards them, her miniature face contorted with blistering rage, and, rushing one step behind, the more alarmingly large and heavy Aeleus.  
“What, doesn’t the king got a thousand of these? – Gotta go mystery man”, the first fairy said before zipping away.  
With the leap of someone seeing a freight train come toward him, Xehanort pressed himself against the wall, letting the two guards flurry by, Simmi shouting:  
“Get back here! Yuna! You’re giving fairy kind a bad name,” and Aeleus nodding to him with an apologetic look.  
Stitch growled after them, ears plastered backwards. Xehanort reached up to pat him on the head.  
“Another normal day at the castle,” he said, before continuing his journey.  
The next people he encountered were fortunately not involved in a diamond heist, most of them staff who was hurrying through the corridors as quickly as proper etiquette could allow them to awaiting tasks: Rooms needing dusting and windows waxing, meals to be cocked in the kitchens and flowers in the garden that demanded the guards’ attention.  
No matter the urgency, each individual encountering him stopped and curtsied. Each time they did he spared a second of thought to remember their name, and acknowledge them with it. This lit up their faces. Some servants even paused in the middle of a step, waiting for him to reply before they headed off, his politeness having apparently become expected. This development should have been nothing but pleasing, but after he still hadn’t been able to take more than twenty steps at a time without being subjected to interruptions he begun chewing the inside of his chin to keep himself from scowling at the passersbys instead of smiling.  
The few that cast an eye on his coat he could hear tizzle amongst each other as soon as he had his back turned. At that point he’d already forgotten their faces until the next time he would need to remember them and only their voices remained, rizing to a grating pitch, as if they were children that had gotten jittery about urban legends about ramshackle cabins that were the home of murderers, or snakes living in the sewers that were as long as the hall carpet.  
A greater annoyance still was a group of individuals, all wearing white coats with the insignia of the lab assistant emblemed upon them, who stopped him and dared to start a discussion about their current experiments – forest revitalizing something or other – in the middle of the busy hallway.  
He didn’t know if they were sent by their overseer on a mission to trick him into endorsing more resources to that scientist particular research, or if they were young enthusiasts who had grand ideas about their personal project and thought that everyone who heard about it should naturally be astounded. He didn’t look much older than your average science student; bloody approachable was what he was. Unfaced by his bitingly short responses, the acolytes prattled on, showing him paper after paper.  
Before he had to switch from verbal undertones to outright dismissing them, Stitch, seeming just as impatient, acted as a saving grace by spitting a globe of slime into the face of the most enthusiastic youth. Adding a casual comment that the youngster should hurry down to the showers before the substance begun corroding his skin had the satisfying effect of shooing the nuisances away quicker than quick, though Xehanort bemoaned the ringing ears that the subsequent screaming brought with it.  
It struck him that perhaps he would be spared as many obstructions if he pulled the hood of his coat up, though with Stitch on his shoulder everyone would figure out who he was anyway.  
As soon as he entered the west wing and spotted the burly guard posted outside the entrance to the labs, he breathed a sigh of relief.  
The guard in question was Sapentus, a man with a jaw as broad and stiff as a bear trap and light blue eyes that squinted at Xehanort as he was approaching. The man had developed a need for glasses and probably retirement. Any other king would have exchanged most of the royal guards for younger men several years ago, however Ansem the Wise never seemed concerned for his safety. It also took a lot for the king to fire anyone from his service, even the page boy who somehow got assigned as a letter carrier despite not being able to read. There were jokes circulating that claimed that the king and his guard aged like a royal couple together, and that Ansem had never chosen a queen because he thought several dossen uniformed men were enough to grow old with – Things of that nature.  
As soon as Sapentus recognised him, he closed his mouth around what would have likely been a request to show a clearance and stepped to the side with a:  
“Visiting the prison today as well, young lord?”  
“Yes, Even asked me for a favor.”  
“Ah Stitch, my wife baked me caramel again,” he said as Xehanort passed him, dug into his pocket and retrieved a collection of cream colored bite-sized chunks wrapped in blue striped candy wrapping and encased in a plastic bag. Miss Sofifi’s caramel: More than one tooth had been crushed beyond salvation by them.  
Sapentus lobbed the bag toward Stitch who caught it in his mouth, caramel as well as candy wrapping, as well as plastic bag, and begun chewing. Each candy sounded like a gun going off as he crushed them between his jaws.  
With that lovely noise in his ear Xehanort continued into the west wing. High ceilings and broad halls shrunk, creeping in on themselves. Stripes exuding fluorescent light appeared, trailing along the walls and replacing the now nonexistent windows. Xehanort reached out a hand and brushed across one as he walked, savoring the impetus that coursed through them as if they were veins connected to a heartbeat.  
Somewhere deep down the layers of the castle rested the power banks of nearly sentient artificial intelligence, connecting to the entire capital through these circuits and managing everything from transport to robotic house cleaners. One would never be able to guess, when walking though Radiant Garden, that it was a city of such advancement. All architects were conditioned to preserve the medieval aesthetic and integrate buildings with nature, hiding technology behind ivy and simple brick houses. It had been an declaration made by Ansem the Appreciating, Xehanort presumed to remember, deciding that the capital would differentiate itself from the contaminated and narrow townships that cropped up in the eve of the industrial revolution.  
In these halls all smokescreens were abandoned, the inner workings of the city laid bare, much like if you took a human head and peeled away the skin, suddenly able to see that behind the narcissism, narrow mindedness and folly laid an ingeniously constructed brain responsible for each facsimile of a person's perceptions.  
The hum of energy in the air blended together with the murmur of voices coming from the many lab doors he passed by. Self absorbed voiced, narrating out loud the work carried out by the hands in front of them without realizing it; demanding voices, barking orders to helpers who gladly did the grunt work for the chance to toil beside the best; and voices stuck in heated debate.  
Recognising some of them, Xehanort hurried his steps, unwilling to be seen if any of the individuals they belonged to would peek out into the corridor. Certain project leaders, known to be the the lands best and brightest, had adverse feelings about the neophyte who had become one of the kings most favored students, a youngster who had displayed alarming yellow eyes when he first showed up – What was the king thinking keeping him in the castle; not sending him to a detention facility on the opposite end of the country?  
The very thought of the discussions that the esteemed scientists outside the circle of apprentices were having behind his back, caused Xehanort to inhale sharply, feeling a ball of fire crackle in the pit of his stomach, a knot of temper that was prone to flare on occasion. He controlled it each time it did, leaving a warmth that crept from his chest out to the edges of his body.  
Do not bother yourself with them, you don’t even have to meet them, he reminded himself.  
That assessment rang as true as the abandoned corridors. Each scientist that worked here would likely be cooped up in their labs until nightfall, entranced in their scientific achievements.  
With minimal effort he would be able to recall and map out each experiment occuring in every lab, though lately he hadn’t found anything other than his current study on the darkness compelling enough to spend the energy thinking about. The other could be researching sand and cardboard boxes for all that he cared.  
He encountered only one single woman, not anyone he knew – Grace the gods. She took one look at his black garb, then gave him a wide girth as she rushed by, white coattails flapping. Stitch glared.  
“It wasn’t you she was avoiding,” Xehanort assured him before turning to the pathway that led to the dungeon.  
Troublesome word that. From personal experience he could say that the dungeons weren’t any less comfortable than any other part of the castle, especially considering how much better the heating system worked below ground. Still, when relaying information about the state of the incarcerated to their close relatives – the only ones allowed details regarding the detentions – he had to always tread carefully around the of the word. Although most understood the necessity of keeping those affected by darkness behind lock and key, he’d lost count of the times he’d had to calm outbursts about their “inhuman treatment”. The decision to keep all the cells submerged in darkness tended to be clause behind most misconceptions.  
Yes, brightly lit rooms are preferable to us in the light. Darklings, on the other hand, abhor them, was how he usually explained it. If they wanted a more detailed explanation he had metaphors that he liked to use. An often successful one was to compare the darkness within people to a wild beast in a cage, and light to a stick that poked it. If the lock on the cage was strong it would hardly matter if you tortured the beast with the stick all day, but if the bars of the cage was rusting away you should consider not driving the beast into a fit of rage.  
He’d heard the horror stories of how many patients had lapsed into a manic state after being shone in their face with a lamp, before Ansem learned this indisputable fact about darklings. Almost indisputable. To X, whether it be day or night, it did not seem to make a difference.  
Another guard was stationed before the door to the dungeon. Mettled, a man with his beard twinned into a twin set of black braids and no remarkable qualities beyond that.  
“Even got you down here I see,” he commented as he spotted Xehanort, then pushed a button on a display beside the door, which had it slide open with a hiss.  
Before he ventured into the blackness on the other side, Xehanort received a sphere about the size of a plum from Mettled. Squeezing it once quickened a beam of red light that lit up a staircase leading steeply downward.  
With the speed of someone would trusted his feet to never stumble, lamp or not, he headed down the stairs, echoes of clacking shoes his only company. While the stairs continued downward many levels, he stopped where footsteps from above ground could not be heard, but the thundering of pouring rain might.  
Stepping through a second gate, a corridor stretched out before him, illuminated two or three steps ahead by the sphere. The clacking dull of his footsteps got pervasive in a way it had not been in the stairs, alleviated by the thick air. The red light gleamed against rows of barred cells, sneaking into view as he walked, occasionally reflecting a pair of eyes within, rat like in their tense vigilance. From several cells came a slight rustling. That noise attracted X’s attention quicker than the lamp did.  
Her cell lied the furthest back, where an aperture beneath the ceiling let in a veil of natural light. She was sitting by her table, raven hair falling down over her face as she bent over one of the book which they endlessly provided her for stimulation, pale fingers, slender as if carved from bone, trailing down the page which she read without any visible challenge in the gloom. He had offered to leave her one of the special lamps, and she had declined, like she did most things, saying that the red light gave her a headache.  
She made a hauntingly ghostly picture, something worth catching on the canvas of a gothic painting, that until she snapped her head upward.  
Two yellow dots sparkled like gold within the shadows of her hair.  
“Who’s there?” she snarled.  
“Me and Stitch”.  
A weary sigh left her, as Xehanort walked the last distance up to her cell. Stitch waved enthusiastically.  
“You forgot to keep your hood up”, she said, as he pressed a thumb against a display on the cell, which made a green lamp peep and unhatch the lock.  
“So I did”.  
Even or Ansem would be horrified if they knew how many times he dismissed wearing the coat properly, and remind him anew that Braig had lost his eye in a battle involving someone consumed by darkness, or tell him other cautionary tales. So it always went; he kept forgetting the hood anyway.  
“Hello Stitch,” X turned her eyes to his companion, expression warming.  
With an unfearful leap, Stitch pounced from Xehanort’s shoulder right onto X’s lap, making the perfectly composed girl whoop and hold up her hands to properly catch him without scratching himself on his claws, not that the risk was as large as it seemed – While known for damaging most about anything with such ease that you would think it programmed into his DNA, Stitch had learned to not hurt anyone he liked in even his most energetic moods. Xehanort’s only worry was that X would see his smile from watching her being taken aback, and become sour. That might come to pass anyhow considering the conversation that awaited.  
“Have you had a bad morning?”  
“What makes you ask that?”  
“Even implied that you had started a fight with him,” he said, placing lamp and satchel down on the table and unlatching the latter, revealing an assortment of simple medical tools. “Care to tell me what that was about?”  
The book that she had been reading lay open and unguarded. He took the opportunity to peek at the pages, managing to sparse out that the subject was medieval history before X reached out the hand not occupied with scratching Stitch behind the ear, and pulled it into her lap.  
“I don’t try to start fights with people who don’t start them on their own.”  
“He seemed upset enough.”  
X sighed, one nail idly scratching down the page of the book, as her eyes turned to observe the light streaming down from the aperture.  
“He said that it was about time I picked a better name for myself. It would be better than going by a title given to me out of convenience. I asked him how I would be able to do that: the reason you call me “X” in the first place is because I don’t recall my true name. He told me that I had unsound logic – From there it spiralled away.”  
“A sensitive question for you?”  
“Maybe you don’t get it. You still had your name when they found you.”  
Xehanort hummed thoughtfully while looking around the room to see if he could spot the second chair that belonged to the table. He had the urge to defend Even’s side – referring to her by a single letter or “the girl” felt undignified – though the last thing he wanted was getting on her bad side over a petty argument. The shame was on them for not being more imaginative back when they first picked her up from the cobble.  
There it was, tucked behind the bathroom door, that was, in turn, obstructed by the bed. He colored himself impressed by the apparent ease with which she pushed around heavy furniture, taking full advantage of the fact that hers was the only cell where tables, chairs and such hadn’t been screwed into the ground to keep them from being overturned or used as clubs.  
“I wouldn’t say that keeping my name was much of a boon when I was missing everything else to go with it,” he said while heading to lay claim to the other chair.  
Leaning across the covers would be the easiest way to go about fetchin it, but it would be a shame to topple the frankly impressive miniature castle that she had built out of books upon the covers – If she could have moved the bricks of the wall, he figured they would have been standing on their short end by now, and here she kept insisting that she was not at all restless. He ended up awkwardly leaning and twisting at the same time to try and reach his goal.  
A sigh from X:  
“Help him Stitch.”  
A clatter followed as Stitch jumped down onto the wall and scattered along it until he could reach the chair, lift it with a single hand, and maneuver it over to Xehanort.  
Turning around, he saw that X was sifting through the content of the file which he had left on the table, looking disappointed at not finding anything more interesting than recordings of her daily values.  
Did you believe I would leave top secret information there as unguarded as a medieval novel? Xehanort though, a smile tugging at his lips as he strolled over to the table, coming to a stop beside it since the end where he usually sat had been pushed against the wall. Perhaps all the inconveniently placed decor was X way of saying that she had enough of visitors for today, still when he glanced at her she sighted, stood up and dragged the furniture backwards until he had a narrow space to plot the cair down in. Maybe this was a sign of acceptance toward him, or she didn’t want him sitting next to her.  
Stitch was rummaging around on a shelf that housed a number of Xs smaller belongings – a nail-file, hairbrush and a game of dice among other things – seeming to have lost interest in them at the moment. Xehanort glanced briefly at him as he picked up and sniffed a grey figurine, formed clumsily out of mud.The figure resembled a plushie, or (vaguely) a cat, with a piece of red cloth tied around its neck like a cape and acorn eyes that studied him from across the room, pleading to not let Stitch eat it, something he seemed to be considering. Since X did not even bother glancing at what Stitch was doing, he supposed it wouldn’t be a large loss.  
If he remembered correctly, Aeleus had been the one to let X try out working with clay. He’d instructed her to shape the first animal that came to mind in the hopes that what turned out would resemble local fauna of wherever she came from. If bipedal cats were common occurrences in her homeland then he might be vindicated in his long lasting suspicion that X was actually an extraterrestrial in disguise. Jests aside ...  
He sat himself down opposite from her, placed a finger on the journal, slid it over to his side, turned the file upright and flipped open the page with the current date.  
“I see here that Even took your blood pressure. Did he have time to check your eyes and temperature?” he spoke aloud while reading.  
“No.”  
“Would you allow me to.”  
X pushed her chair back in silent admission. Nodding, Xehanort retrieved a tiny flashlight and moved to Xs side to where he could shine into her eyes, noting the rate in which the pupils contracted and scribbling down the results with his left hand.  
“How have you been feeling? he asked.  
“Like usual”.  
Xehanort drew across over a square in the folder, the corresponding question typed beside it. Reclaiming his seat, he moved his left hand to the question below while the right put the flashlight back in its proper place.  
“Anything new that you recall?”  
“No.”  
“Have you had any thoughts or images appear in your mind that run contrary to your usual thought processes, or which gets stuck in your head for a long time?”  
“No.”  
“While waiting for this to beep, nod or shake your head to give your answer …”  
:This while holding out a thermostat for X to put in her mouth.  
“… Have you experienced any of the following as of late: Headaches? … Drowsiness? … Involuntary movements? … Unexpected bursts of anger? …”  
All of this was replied to with head-shakes and the occasional shrug.  
The termometer beeped. X pulled it out and handed it to Xehanort, who checked the numbers for as long as he needed to confirm that they weren’t unusual in the least.  
“It all looks stable. We won’t have to expect any attacks.”  
A snort came out of her. He did not blame her reaction. As far as violent outbursts or derangement went she differed from any other patient. Dilan had even suggested that her alarming yellow eye color could be something that she had been born with, or acquired in another manner other than falling to darkness.  
Even had put that theory in its place, pointing out that all tests they ran confirmed that X’s heart was as steeped in darkness as any other fallen, though he admitted that her condition was unique:  
“As if she lives in symbiose with the darkness. It remains strong but in a subdued state.”  
Then he’d aired ideas of allowing her to walk free – If Ansem explained to the townspeople that she showed no trace of wickedness or an unbalanced mental state, then surely it would prevent any riots.  
This prospect Xehanort had made sure to strangle in its early stages by telling Even that if he was mistaken in his assumption that X was safe, it would damage Ansem’s reputation beyond repair. For how much Even held to the ideal of letting reason rule over fears, he had his weak spots and never brought up the possibility again.  
He flipped a page in the journal.  
“The following tests will only work if you would allow me to put you into a state of light hypnosis. Could you…”  
An unhesitant shake of her head.  
He opened his mouth to respond, but forgot what he wanted to say when somebody begun screaming below the floor.  
While muffled, the yell had an unsettling quality, traversing from human sounding to the hollering of a cow getting whipped. He shuddered.  
“Is that … Mikeal from…”  
“From the level below, yes,” X replied, reaching up to idly thumb at her hair.  
Up on his shelf, Stitch dropped the cat sculpture with a clang and grabbed his ears, looking like he was about to twist them like rags.  
“He started screaming like this a couple of days ago,” X continued. “I asked Even who it was. Both of you are able to identify us by the sound of our screams, have you ever realized that?”  
“Does that mean you have had to listen to that every day?” Xehanort said, his hands curling into fists.  
Why hadn’t Even done something about it, or informed him? How long would that banshee feel the need to keep stabbing needles into their ears?  
“We could have him moved,” he continued.  
“To where? – A place where he can disturb somebody else?  
“He shouldn’t disturb anyone. You are meant to stay in an non-stressful environment. Lack of soundproof flooring is a design-flaw.”  
As the screaming refused to settle, he snapped the journal shut, silently wishing that siccing Stitch at Mikeal, hadn’t been a morally frowned upon act, and fearing the answer if he asked X how long the fits tended to last.  
“Does continuing your examination outside sound good to you? he asked.  
The suggestion had X widen her eyes, and he thought he heard her breath hitch.  
“Isn’t that breaking the rules?”  
Her voice held doubt because what she heard must be too good to be true. Evidently, being let out of her cell to stretch her legs indoors at night together with the other patients, did not sathe her need for a change in scenery. Only more reason to follow through with this impulsive idea.  
“I have the authority to judge whether the rules are relevant or not. You won’t be bothered by the sunlight and won’t be bothering anyone”, he said.  
The diamond brightness that ignited in her eyes made it seem like she was about to hug him in joy, then she bowed her head and he saw her jaw clench, pushing away all display of desperately needing what he offered.  
“The inner sanctum garden blooms magnifically even in early spring. This time of day it will be undisturbed,” he prodded.  
Please, stop being stubborn for this moment only, he begged her within his mind.  
Her gaze flickered to him for a moment.  
“Alright, for Stitch’s sake since he looks like he wants to pluck his eardrums out,” she said.  
A gratuitous gabble came from Stitch, who jumped down to the floor, made his way over to Xehanort and climbed his way up to his usual spot, only this time shoving his head into the unused hood. He was glad the smile that grew on his lips could be interpreted as directed towards these antics.  
He would have extended his hand for her as he stood, but knew that it was a big leap for X to go from letting him flash a light in her eyes to make body contact on her own volition. It happened occasionally – he kept track of the instances – though never within the first hour of his visits.  
Unlocking the door and sweeping his arm outward invitingly had to do as far as courtesy went. X swept past him in a fluid gait that made her hair extend like a veil of satin after her, exiting the cell like a queen would her castle. Xehanort found himself staring for a moment too long.


	2. Chapter 2

While he gave Xehanort an aghast look when he emerged from the dungeon together with X, Mettled did not attempt to stop them. With his head held high, and silently glaring as much authority into the guard as he could muster, Xehanort knew that he created the perfect picture of a person who knew what he was doing and should not be questioned.  
It would be a lie if he said that he didn’t worry about the possible consequences if they ran into too many people, especially other guards who had a duty to protect the general populace from darklings and were not typically as easily cowed as the unusually spineless Mettled.  
If he took the path toward the main garden that lay like a blooming heart in the middle of the palace, it would definitely cause chaos, as the servants that were milling about had only ever encountered yellow eyed people in books about the subject and in the horror stories that they had been told as children.  
The secluded labs had a sanctum of its own however, where the scientist could take a break and bask in the fresh air. It wasn’t strange for large structures within Radiant Garden to have several gardens. Residents in the city seemed as attached to sunlight and the smell of earth as the flowers that they grew and cherished. If he had his timing right, the garden would be unpopulated however; the scientist would all have returned to work after a lunch break and the guards on garden duty mostly worked in the center.  
The soft shoes that X vore made hardly a rustle in comparison to his clopping heels. When he glanced towards her, she was staring straight ahead without making any show of anticipation, even though this would be the first time she had been allowed out during the day. She must have felt the difference, castle buzzing with activity from thousands of people moving, breathing and working within, palpable even as the corridors lay temporarily desolated.  
He should have visited a garden with her earlier, though usually there were other patients beside X that demanded time and attention. There simply hadn’t been a lot of opportunities.  
Not until they reached their destination did she show a reaction, blinking against the brightness of the sky, then widening her eyes as if to catch all the sensations of the light, the greenery and the birds jumping up and down the branches of the gardens sole three, a beech that leaned against the stone wall marking the edge of the castle grounds, trunk looking as if it had melted into the stone. Bulbs, half unraveled at the tips, adorned each twig, bulging as if they could hardly wait to burst out fully as soon the weather became a bit warmer. The bushes surrounding the beech and the cobbled paths curling through the garden had been too impatient to wait, leaves and flowers in full bloom on their branches.  
The paths led through alcoves covered with clinging ivy, to a circle of benches and flowerbeds, a fountain placed in the center. A dolphin pranced on its top, frail trickle of water pouring from its blowhole. Benches and flowerbeds, the former curved furniture made out of white wood and the latter arranged in patterns of red and gold that reflected the royal colors, had been placed around symmetrically. Apart from said flowerbeds, all other plants were allowed to grow as they wished across the emerald lawn.  
Stitch scanned the birds. Xehanort crouched to let him get down to the ground without leaping, hoping that he would not ruin the peaceful mood by initiating an avian massacre.  
A shy sun illuminated it all. X’s pale face was drawn toward it, her eyelids fluttering. She breathed in deeply, then turned to the ground, eying the flowers that curtseyed at her with button heads in pink, yellow, white and blue. It looked like she wanted nothing more than bend down and pick some, comb fingers through the glass and digging her nails into nurturing soil.  
“We could try an experiment while you are here,” he said.  
X turned toward him with a wary look. He gave her a reassuring smile before reaching out toward a cluster of wind flowers. Though he used the gentlest of touches to pluck one, a reverberating tremble coursed through the group, a gathering of timidly shivering pure-white  
stars. He held out the flower to X, who crossed her arms and looked at him as if suspecting a poisoning plot.  
“Recall how we sometimes show you a series of pictures in the hopes that one will spark a memory,” he said. “We can do the same with flowers. Pick a few that you like. If any flowers looks familiar it could mean that you saw a lot of them where you were growing up.”  
A flash of raw feeling passed over X’s face, one he didn’t have time to identify. Likely having practised doing so for some time, she was soon to swallow it down.  
“As you said, we have tried doing that kind of experiment before. What is the point of continuing making attempts?”  
“It could have a worth in and of itself,” he tested, holding out the flower further.  
A snort sounded beside him. He turned to see Stitch give him the closest impression of an eye roll the creature could manage with it’s entirely black eyes.  
“Am I acting too corny for your taste?” he asked dryly.  
Fingers brushed against the hand that held the flower, chilly like a breeze. He froze, hoping that his breath hadn’t hitched audibly. When he turned to X, she was holding the flower gently between thumb and forefinger and examined it from all angles as if she was searching for a message on a blank paper.  
“What are you going to do?” she asked.  
Most of all he would have wanted to walk through the garden with her, inspecting flowers together.  
“I’ll wait there,” he said, pointing towards the benches, because she would never relax if they did things that way.  
She nodded then looked out across the lawn, quiet as always and consumed by her secret thoughts. Avoiding to trample any flowers, she stepped off the cobble.  
“Do you want to come with me?” she asked Stitch, who grinned.  
When she looked back at him, to see if he committed to his word of letting her go by herself, Xehanort strode off to a bench, sat down, draped his arms across the back of it and made a point out of leaning back and closing his eyes. He wasn’t worried about letting her out of sight, even if it occurred to her to sneak away. She would never get far. Nonaless he hoped that letting her off on her own conveyed faith on his part.  
While he pretended to doze off, he was really perking his ears to catch the rustle of footsteps as X moved. Opening his eyes a notch he saw her stride over to a syrene with intermingling clusters of purple and cream blossoms. She pulled down a branch, leaned in and drank the scent. After doing this for a while she closed her hand around the base of the base of a twig, finger wide and twisted it loose with a flick of the wrist. The ease in which she did this made Xehanort wonder if she would be able to break actual fingers with the same grip.  
A whipping snap had her jump into the air, then turn to berate Stitch who had followed her example and broken apart an entire section of the bush with as little effort. He pouted at her, but seemed to get that tearing the syrene apart was an overboard way of picking flowers, put the branch back to where it sort of fit together with the bush again and gave the trunk a pat of apology.  
With the beginning of a bouquet in her hand, X continued screening each spot of colour among the vegetation with the gaze of a connoisseur, bending down in front of gleaming buttercups and a cluster of dwarf iris, and trailing her fingers through their arching stalks. After picking them she glanced back towards the bench, prompting him to tilt his head backwards and pretend that he hadn’t been looking.  
Now watching considerably less interesting clouds instead, he let his eyes close and focused on the warm fingers from the sun touching his face like an old memory.  
When was the last time he had spent any lengthy amount of time outside? In comparison to native Radiant Garden citizens he lacked the normally mandatory aversion for week long periods of indoor life, or so his fellow apprentices had told him, though it wasn’t as if he disliked this.  
A garden-scented wind tugged at the hair resting over his shoulders, and brought the rustle and hustle of last fall’s leaves as they were dragged across the cobble.  
While minutes passed during which he sat perfectly still, his awareness begun expanding toward his surroundings the way water poured in a pan would strive towards its edges, until he did not feel the breaths his own body made. His mind picked up the tremble of every single quaking leaf on the beech, where the birds sat as they spun their short and sweet melodies, and the impact X’s shoes. Not exclusively through hearing; more as if he sensed through a combination of stimuli he knew not how to name.  
What this state could not do, was tell him that X was moving toward him. When she cleared her throat right beside him, he got dragged back to the normal planes of reality like a man jerked from sleep by someone throwing a stone at his head.  
Straightening, he blinked several times to realign his sight with his brain and peered towards X. More than a few minutes had passed, if the ache in his neck was any indication.  
“Did you fall asleep?” Seventeen asked, sitting down on the other side of the bench and resting the quite large bouquet she had gathered on her lap.  
“My mind was just wandering, I think,” Xehanort replied while massaging his shoulder.  
One quick glance over the garden let him locate Stitch, who was climbing around in the beech; maybe eating its birds. He turned his attention back toward X.  
“Let’s look at what you found.”  
X sort edout the assortment herself with deft movements of her fingers. Most flowers ranged between shades of purple and pink – Maybe he’d found out her favorite color, if nothing else. The flower that X picked from the collection first was orange however, a bulky bulb with strand-like petals, closing in around a fire red center.  
“It’s warm,” she explained.  
Humming in accordance, he splayed his palm in the air above the flower, feeling the heat as if his hand was hovering close to the flame of a candle.  
“They call it the Radiant Blossom. As you might be able to guess from its name, it’s the national flower.”  
He cupped a hand gently around the bulb and retrieved it from X, who allowed it without complaint.  
“They are only able to grow and prosper in the gardens of the capital. People say that it’s because the light shines brighter here than on any other place on earth. That they feel warm like this is also supposedly proof of that. Researchers think that they are somehow able to gather warmth from within the earth, but we still don’t know why they do that.”  
All the while he explained, X’s eyes were widening with interest. Taking the Radiant Blossom back she brushed a finger across the surface.  
“Did this flower feel familiar? Does any of them?” Xehanort asked.  
“No”, X responded, expression blank. “None of them did. I simply found them nice to look at. Thought that I would ask a vase to put them in. I was also interested in knowing their names.”  
“ I could help you with that,” he said.  
Since X didn’t put herself against the idea, they looked through each of the flowers in turn, Xehanort rummaging through the corner of his memory for information about flora that he’d red or heard.  
“That one is iris, bluebell, syrene, these tulips come in many colors, crocus, allium …”  
While he didn’t need long to sort out the bouquets, a couple of clouds had time to blot out the sun, casting their bench in shadow. As little warmth as the spring sun had provided, without it X huttered, only dressed in the single layer of grey garb that was her prisoners uniform. Despite this, she did not seem visibly bothered. He wondered if she would have remained stone faced even in the middle of freezing winter.  
The responsible thing to do would be to escort her out of the cold and return her to her cell; restless X would be happy to know that he felt particularly irresponsible today.  
“It just hit me,” X said, as soon as he had identified the final anemone, taking the trembling white flower from him. “If I bring these back with me, they will die quickly in the darkness. I know that they don’t live forever anyway but …”  
“I could find and bring down a sunlamp to you.”  
A surprised look crossed her face, followed by a puzzled one.  
“Won’t that disturb the others?” she asked.  
That was a valid point. He had not even thought of the other patients.  
“It’s easy to forget about their vulnerability when you are sitting here in broad daylight.”  
“Is that why you care about me more than the others?”  
X was staring.  
It seemed his attempts to remain subtle had failed miserably.  
“It might seem that bringing you out into the garden like this is favoritism, but it’s more complex than that,” he said, opting to not outright refute her claim since that would only convince her that it was true. “The fact is that as you differ from your fellow patients; you have a greater need for stimulation, a need to see the sun and pick beautiful flowers...”  
“...Doing a task that you gave me does not mean that is my desire.”  
“Most people feel the need for such things. It’s human. The point I want to make is that I would treat the other patients the same if I thought it would benefit them. Remember that I sat in one of those cells myself once” I, if anyone, know what it’s like.”  
As she continued regarding him, he wondered if she truly needed to ask him anything, since it felt like her smoky topaz eyes were already cracking him open like a nut.   
“Sometimes, I do forgot that,” she mumbled, then looked away across the garden.  
“Is something wrong?”  
Maybe it was the way the shadows gathered on her face that gave him that impression.  
Exhaling loudly:  
“There is something that has been bothering me.”  
She wetted her lips, regretting saying even that much.  
“Could I help you with it?” he tested, hoping that whatever was on her mind had been itching longer than she could bear to swallow it down.  
“Not sure. If I asked you a questions about the other prisoners, would you tell me the truth?” she asked, misgivings clear.  
“As long as it’s not classified information,” he replied, because pretty platitudes like “I would tell you anything” was not the kind of lie he thought would work.  
Her gaze narrowed.  
“I would inform you if that’s the case,” he continued.  
Another exhale. A hand went up to her face, scrubbing it like a person after a night of no sleep.  
“Remember how Mikael was screaming in the dungeon? He wasn’t the first person who did that. There was someone else in the cell below mine before. He vanished one day. I asked Even what happened to him, he told me Miklan’s name and said that he had been there the entire time.”  
“This concerns you?”  
“I know that you take some of us away. What happens to them?”  
He chuckled, a sound that had her eyes go wide. Surprise looked pleasant on her, the way a mountain lion might look cutely confused if you flicked it on the nose. That is before it regained its bearings and tore the offender limb from limb.  
“Sorry, It’s simply stupid that you have had to worry about this,” he remedied before X did that to him. “We send them back where they came from.”  
Any coldness that flared in her gaze due to the casual – dismissive even – response, was pushed away in favor of a quickening curiosity that had her tilt her head.  
“Where is that?”  
“It is a common knowledge that nobody ever talks about, I suppose. Normally, when somebody in their midst fall into darkness, the people here send them to the outskirts of civilization, where there are detention facilities filled with guards. The only reason that we can keep a number of darklings in the center of the capital like this, is because we have strict safety protocols. If anyone grows too aggressive, we have to move them away.”  
“I see.”  
“What kind of horrible stuff did you imagine we subjected them to?”  
“I did not...”  
He chuckled again; she glared.  
“You have a twisted sense of humor,” she huffed.  
“I’m aware, excuse me,” he replied, reaching up a finger to scrub against what he assumed was a bit of pollen irritating his eye.  
He was starting to remember that there existed an actual reason why he avoided the outdoors.  
A scitter of claws made him look up to see Stitch approaching them, wearing a grin on his broad face and with one arm hidden behind his back.  
“What do you got there?” Xehanort asked.  
“Sopra neihi Te ha,” Stitch replied, narrowing his eyes at him.  
“I shouldn’t ask that since it’s a surprise,” Xehanort translated, earning an impressed look from X, who had, so far, only learned simple Stitch expressions liken “Hello” and “Can I eat that?”.  
Nodding, Stitch turned to face X fully, straightening his back and puffing his chest out he began saying what was obviously a rehearsed preamble that X had no chance of understanding, then whipped out a bundle of bird plumage and presented them to X like a gentleman a rose to his prom date. He had been picky in his selections, every single feather a primary from the wing, glimmering in tinted colors of red, yellow, blue – It seemed he had laboured to collect from each specimen available in the garden.  
You think I’m a bit much for offering her a flower, hypocrite, Xehanort thought.  
X eyes had widened to the point that you would think that Stitch had presented her a rattlesnake.  
“Ah, Stitch that’s … hmm … but… I’ll have to ask. You didn’t kill any birds, did you?”  
“Sicka tocka. Nami nala. Coba iteku,” Stitch brushed her concern off with a paw in the air.  
She looked toward Xehanort.  
“He says that because you don’t like when he takes too much from the same place, he made sure to pick only one feather per bird,” he supplied.  
The animals would have nonaless been traumatized by the event, though Stitch’s exercise in restraint seemed to satisfy X, who put on a smile that either had to be forced or she was simply that unused to smiling.  
When she reached forward and accepted the bundle every buzzkill warning about bacteria- and lice infested feathers that he had ever heard passed through Xehanort’s head, though seeing her gaze brighten made him keep his mouth shut.  
“It seems … ” X said as she turned the bundle around, admiring the way the sun played on the slick surfaces. “ … That I have gotten a bouquet that doesn’t need sunlight. Here, you can have these in return.”  
She gathered the flowers on the bench and held them out to Stitch, who cooed in delight, leaned forward and sniffed at them …  
This was the point where Xehanort’s mouth could be shut no longer.  
“No, hang o…”  
Stitch shoved the bouquet into his mouth and begun chewing it amidst crispy sounds. Xehanort released a sigh as the Radiant Blossom got crushed into red mush together with tulips and allium. X burst into laughter. A rough sound – more like a snort – the happiest that he had ever heard her be, freezing him up long after she had settled her slip of composure behind her hand.  
“Do you think it’s right, keeping us here?”  
Out of bounds as he was at the moment, he had to hum stupidly for a while before he realized that she had delved back into the conversation from before. Even then his mind refused to draw up any useful thing to say. Her eyes looked calm, and her words were tinted with a carefree tone, as if she was asking his opinion on the garden’s design, but a hand still hid the rest of her expression. The question had to have a grim underbelly, a test of character that he hadn’t expected to be put through.  
“ I don’t how to answer that…” he fumbled. “It’s either they be a prisoner here or in some other place. Well … I do agree that keeping darklings close to be studied gives us a precious opportunity to find out more about darkness.”  
“Why would you want to study something like that?”  
Xehanort imagined mortuaries sometimes received similar soundings questions of why they had chosen to do what they did. She was at least not giving him disgusted looks, instead studying the feathers, finger trailing across the edge of a robins sand brown and orange speckled one, brushing so lightly it could hardly be called a touch.  
“We can dislike and fear the darkness all we like; it still fills our heart in as large a quantity as light does,” he answered her, words at last coming fluidly as the question was one that he’d heard, in varying levels of bluntness, many times before. “Because studies into darkness have been frowned upon for a long time, researchers of the heart know close to everything about one side of the coin, but understands near to none about the other. Darkness is intimately connected with our subconscious. To study it is to study feelings and instincts within our minds that are normally out of our reach. Even memories. Why do you think I have tried to convince you to participate in our experiments?”  
A twitch from X. He was veering into risky territory too recklessly.  
“The ultimate pipe dream ...” he chose to sidetrack. “ … Is to become able to analyse both the light and the darkness inside of a heart to the point where we could replicate it with data. Who knows, we might find the secret to create new human life or revive the dead.”  
“What?”  
The shock X displayed was to her credit a comparably calm reaction to him wenting the idea of life or death could being controlled by a computer. There was no cry of “him sacralizing the laws of nature”.  
“Very much in theory. We actually don’t know for sure what will be possible,” he clarified.  
There was a tug at the end of his coat. He looked down to see Stitch smiling a smile full of shredded petals at him, and extending a singular crow’s plume, a second surprise hidden behind his back. It had the same dark gray color as smoke, dotted dust of silver at the base, the coloring that he found made crows more beautiful than most people gave them credit for.  
Honestly, this creature …  
Exhaling in a chuckle, he leaned down to accept the gift, rubbing Stitch behind the ears as thanks. Purring at that particular brand of attention, Stitch jumped onto the bench, placing himself between them to let Xehanort continue the scratching, while he appreciated the plume. Maybe it could become a good writing quill.  
“I heard that you apprentices were the ones to convince the king to allow the experimentation,” X said. “Are these your reasons?”  
The chill in the air seemed to come from more than the clouds in that moment. He tensed, then resumed pleasing Stitch in order to seem undisturbed.  
“I suppose so, though it is not as if master Ansem doesn’t have his own goals with the research,” he sighed. “You know about Ienzo, I believe. He was the one to suggest that Ansem the Wise should outfit labs specifically for the study of darklings and darkness.”  
“I thought Ienzo was a child.”  
“A brilliant one, but you are right. Without us grown up apprentices supporting the idea, Ansem likely wouldn’t have followed through with his request.”  
Without he himself planting the idea in Ienzo’s mind, the boy would likely never have made his proposal either.  
“When I first arrived to this castle …” he continued, leaving Stitch be – his companion did enjoy a good scratch behind the ear much like a dog, but not for an endless amount of time, which was an important distinction to make to avoid bone fractures – and lent back against the bench, twirling the crow feather in his hand. “... Ansem was already keeping people beneath the grounds. He wanted to find a way to reverse what had happened to them, cleanse those who had fallen to darkness instead of banishing them like all the previous rulers did. I believe I’m the first ever case where he succeeded.” A bitter smile crinkled at his lips as he said this. “The more we learn about darkness however, the bigger our chances are to make a difference. With Ienzo in the picture, the stakes are personal for a lot of us.”  
“What do you mean by that?”  
She was furrowing her brow, taking in all that he said. He risked a direct glance at her.  
“It is unproven, but a widespread belief is that children of people with a lot of darkness in them, inherits great darkness themselves. Both of Ienzo’s parents were kept in cells here at one point, and he is a byronic child. One can’t help but to feel concerned.”  
“I see.”  
“Did this get everything you were carrying off your chest?” he dared to ask.  
Furrowing her brow; pondering her unsaids, she still nodded courtly.  
“I understand better than I did before. Has the experiments yielded the results you hoped for?”  
He prayed she wouldn’t realise the nerve she had hammered a nail into. The argument with the king echoed in his head, the snap of Ansem’s dark tenor voice. The plume creaked in pain as his fingers pressed hard around them. He barely paid attention, focused on not baring his teeth like a growling beast when answering her.  
“We have made progress. Perhaps not to the extent that we could have. Master Ansem has put limits on what we can do in the labs.”  
“Te ha.”  
When had Stitch climbed onto the backrest? Xehanort turned around to the blue face staring into his own. With his claws pointing away, Stitch knocked him on the forehead.  
“Casu kata ya?”  
Scowling, Xehanort pushed away his paw.  
“What do you mean “Who do I got inside my head?”  
He took a deep breath to settle himself, and frowned down into his hand, where he could see the crushed flat tip of Stitch’s gift. The chances of keeping it for anything more useful than decoration on his windowsill were thoroughly butchered. He put it down in his lap – Let’s not destroy your present more than necessary, Xehanort.  
“Could I ask you something in return?” he asked X, returning to the game of derailing the subject matter.  
An annoyed wrinkle appeared on her brow. He hadn’t expected any less.  
“Guess that’s fair. It will depend on the question,” she replied.  
That he hadn’t expected.  
At the prospect of X being willing to share something about herself with him, he was shamefully close to bouncing upright like a child who had been told that it would be bought a puppy.  
He bound this excitement tight. Like any good scientist he knew not to make wild assumptions based on what he wanted to be true. That X was in a particular caregiving mood today did not mean he would be getting an answer to questions that most itched his mind. “Are you telling the truth when you say that you don’t remember a single thing at all, or is it something that you do not want us to know?” was only the tip of the iceberg.  
If she got a sense that he was trying to interrogate her, then he could say goodbye to all the goodwill he had surmised up to this point. A harmless question, something you would ask for the sake of innocent curiosity and nothing more, would serve him best, no matter how much less interesting the conversation would be.  
At this point he had taken a long time to think up the question that he had politely asked if he could pose to her. X was giving him a puzzled look.  
“Could you tell me why it feels upsetting to change your name?”  
Her turn to be disoriented by a question. Her argument with Even having likely receded far from her mind.  
“Why would you want to know that?”  
I don’t. Having a conversation with you is exhilarating and I don’t want it to stop, he thought.  
“It’s natural to want to learn what you don’t understand,” he said.  
After a couple of moments, she sighed, an uncomfortable look on her face. Whatever sense of fairness that had compelled her to let him ask her something from the start, seemed intent on having her defy all discomfort however.  
“I said something to Even during our argument that I think sums it up pretty well: Whatever name I take, no matter how much thought I put into it, or how pretty it sounds, it will not be my name; it will be fake.”  
“Ah,” Xehanort hummed, mulling over her words. “I can understand that logic.”  
“Even did not.”  
“It runs contrary to his cultural upbringing.”  
“What do you mean?” With a gruff sound she slumped forward, resting a tired-at-this-point chin on her hand. “Which fact am I missing out on now?”  
“Out of all the apprentices that you know personally, only Aeleus go by his birth name.”  
She blinked at him.  
“There’s no way over half of them ... Are you including Ienzo?”  
“Yes, and as I said, it’s part of the culture. When master Ansem explained it to me, he compared it to a person who wakes up one day and decides to throw away their entire wardrobe, then replace it because they want everybody to start regarding them differently. If you asked anyone over the age of fifty what they have been called by, there’s a chance they would give you between four to ten various names.”  
“Does names have any value to them, if everybody switches on the fly?”  
“Not sure if it’s that simple. They ponder quite studiously before each exchange. Less of a personal value, I suppose; the name’s literal meaning is what matters. When I asked Even why he picked his name, he told me that, in the past, “even” signified the act of questioning established fact or offer a different point of view. Fitting for someone who has committed his life to revolutionizing the field of science. He took it when he became master Ansem’s first apprentice, and did not tell me what he had been called beforehand.”  
“It never occurred to me that it worked like that, still …” she shrugged. “How could I tell what is normal and what is not?”  
“When Ansem first explained it to me, I also thought it sounded strange. Where ever we come from, it probably worked differently, and people wore their names from the cradle to the grave.”  
He tilted his head back, looking toward the sky. Where he had lived before, at least the sky must have been the same. Then again, maybe it hadn’t. Could the sky have been green instead of blue? Could the cloud have been solid, birds sinking into them as if they were mountains of whipped cream?  
“Maybe, our homes are the only place in the universe where names are permanent, and we are the ones that are weird,” X voice brought him out of his spiralling-away speculations.  
She joked? Judging by the amused linth in her voice, it seemed so. When he turned toward her, he tried his hardest not to stare.  
“Perhaps,” he replied, satisfyingly casually.  
Her fingers were drumming against the bench.  
“Could you tell me about the others? What made them pick their names?”  
Beside her, Stitch, who had settled down contently to listen to them, was also tilting his head in interest.  
You’re actually fascinated by this topic, Xehanort reflected, then rummaged through his memory in order to provide.  
“Master Ansem’s name is hereditary.”  
“He did not choose it?”  
“As the ruler his situation is special. The lineage of Ansems stretches back to the very first kings, and every regent is granted the name upon ascending. It means “One to which people submits”. Not a meaning my master cares for. He picked the epithet “The Wise” to represent the part of him who is not a domineering king, but a researcher who values knowledge overall.”  
“How about Ienzo?”  
“I don’t know about him. He has never told anyone why he picked a new name or what it represents. Likely it has been a way to distance himself from his old life.”  
“His situation is not the best.”  
“Mmm … Someone I could tell you more about is Dilan.”  
“Burly fellow with a black ponytail? Yeah, we’ve met.”  
“Does the name Braig also ring a bell?”  
“No. You were going to tell me about Dilan, weren’t you?”  
“The name Dilan belonged to a guardsman that appear in many of Radiant Garden’s old courtly ballads. Dilan the Stalwart. He’s famous for giving up his land and titles in order to fully devote his life to serving the king. A gallant man, he received many a token for affection and burned each and every one; that love would not come between him and his duty.”  
“What a tragic man.”  
“You think so?”  
“Migga,” Stitch cut in, pointing to himself with a grin.  
“That’s right, you also changed your name,” Xehanort said.  
Eyes widening, X turned to Stitch.  
“You never told me that. What were you called previously?”  
Jumping down onto the path, Stitch extended a claw, and, paying no heed to the fact that cobblestone was not a suitable material to carve messages in, cut three signs into the stone.  
“626,” X red. “You were named after a number, and here people claim that answering to a single letter is impersonal. What made you pick “Stitch” out of all other options?”  
“Cosa karavu,” he answered after a moments of humming in though.  
“He liked the way it sounded,” Xehanort said.  
X mouth opened, then she shook her head.  
“You are more adaptable than I am. I wish it would be as easy for me to simply pick a name I like.”  
“You should explain this to Even. By keeping to “X” you are, in his mind, conveying to others that you have no identity of your own.”  
“If he dares show up again, I promise to clear up the misunderstanding,” she clipped, going back to play with the feathers in her grip, picking out a lark’s one and stroking it’s sharp tip with a thumb.  
“At this point refusing to call myself something other than “X” could be some complicated sense of integrity.” she mused down at the plume.  
“Facula,” Stitch cried out.  
When they looked at him he moved to a non-vandalized spot on the cobble and scraped across it in an X pattern, beside it he put two horizontal lines, resembling a equals sign, then proceeded to write two three letter words, one above the other. Done, he looked up with an expectant grin.  
“KEY” and “KYE,” X mumbled, reading with a puzzled look.  
The moment she said the words out loud, revelation clicked in Xehanort’s mind.  
“Stitch is proposing a compromise, I think.”  
As X’s confusion transferred to him, he pointed at both words on one side of the equal sign.  
“In a certain ancient language that is how they pronounced the letter “X”. They are words with meanings of their own (Death specifically, but don’t tell her that) Using them would technically not be different from still having the name “X”.  
She frowned.  
“You suggest I would pronounce my name something like “Key” instead?”  
“It sounds nicer.”  
The word fitted her also. X certainly seemed like the key to unlock many answers to the questions that had nagged in the back of his mind ever since he woke up in Radiant Garden, a nagging that had steadily grown into torture, like tinnitus screaming at him, so much he didn’t understand.  
With the tiniest of groans, she buried her face in her palms, then leaned down toward Stitch.  
“ I will need some time to think about it, but thank you.”  
“You can lift a boulder fifty times your body mass, calculate as fast as our computers, and now it turns out you have knowledge of ancient languages, Xehanort told Stitch, quirking his lips. “How many surprises do you have in store?”  
“What kind of ancient language is it?” X asked.  
Xehanort froze up, blinking.  
He did not know.  
The knowledge had laid close at hand, but he could not recall where he’d got it from.  
He furrowed his brow. Had he red about it in the books covering language history and dialects – No ... Maybe he’d found it in “The search for the root to all language” – Impossible; that book had been nothing but unsound drivel. Could one of the researchers have talked about it? Not for the life of him could he could conjure a face ...  
X tilted her head at the visible dismay he emanated.  
“You probably red somewhere and forgot the details,” she offered.  
In regards to anybody else that would have been a safe assumption, but apart from the gaping hole in his past, he never forgot anything. Stitch simply shrugged at the question, far more comfortable with not being able to provide a definitive answer.  
“Alright, let’s change the subject … ” X sighed, seeing her attempts at assuaging his freak out over etymology fall flat.  
“... Did anybody ever ask you?”  
“Um ... “ he mumbled, physically shaking off the thoughts running through his head.  
“If you wanted to switch your name from “Xehanort” to something else,” she continued. “Shouldn’t they have done that.”  
“How do you figure?”  
“You said that people change their names as they grow into different individuals. Hasn’t anybody walked up to you and said that you should give up the name of whoever you were in the past, because the you who lives in Radiant Garden is definitely someone else.”  
“Ah, that …” He breathed in and out deeply, a pebble of a stone sinking into his chest as suddenly as X’s words. “The very same time that Ansem told me now names worked, he did breach that discussion with me.”  
“Did it upset you?”  
“I’m not sure.” Xehanort felt his fingers press into his palm, and was grateful that he no longer gripped any bird feathers. “At first I could not phantom giving up my name, then, as time passed while I thought about it, I couldn’t deny that “Xehanort” does not sound right. When people call out to me … ”  
“Discarding it is still hard though, right?”  
“Maybe. If I was hard pressed to explain it … The situation could be akin to getting shipwrecked on a deserted island with only a … A towel.”  
She quirked an eyebrow at him. He did not blame her; that was a terrible metaphor.  
“A really unseemly towel. Ugly stains everywhere,” his tongue continued to mumble, tratour to all the delusions of eloquintness he’d ever had about himself. “You might as well throw it away, because it has no use for you, and a towel can’t very well turn into everything else that you’d lost …”  
When this was over, he was going to grab the crowfeather and pierce his chest with the sharp end. Rather that than waking up the next morning and remembering himself rambling.  
X’s cool hand on his arm did the wonder of interrupting him. He startled – how come he could identify a person by the sounds of their steps on a soft carpet, but his senses refused to notice her when she moved – looked down on her hand, then on her, blinking.  
“Could you move to the side a bit?” she asked, attention directed below the bench.  
“Oh”, his mouth said, and his body scrambled with automatic courtesy to do as she asked.  
As soon as he did, she placed the feathers in her lap, reached down and tugged at a plant that poked out of the brickwork a thumb from where his heel had been. It had yet to bloom, bulb swaying on the top of a cylinder shaped steem like a too large green head. As such, Xehanort had only the long and jagged leaves to go by when identifying it.  
“A dandelion,” he said.  
“Dandelion?” X mumbled, barely audible, eyes fixed on the plant.  
“The gardeners must have missed it because it was hidden by the bench, otherwise they would have removed it.”  
“Removed? Why?”  
She looked at him as if the notion of removing flowers was genuinely inconceivable.  
“It is a weed. You seem like … Do you think that this flower is …”  
“I’m not sure, X said, while brushing her thumb over the bulb, digging her thumbnail into it as if to pry open the petals and see the gold resting inside…  
There was an unmistakable sound of a book being dropped, a thump and the crackling from pages being folded against the ground.  
Both of them snapped around and spotted a boy standing beneath one of the alcoves, his arms outstretched where he had been holding the book he was reading before looking up at them and promptly letting it fall. The shadows from the ivy did not manage to make the white on his one uncovered eye any less prominent. Xehanort shuffled, recognising Ienzo and seeing that his petrified gaze wasn’t staring at him but rather X, his blue eye locked to her pair of yellows.  
“Ien…”  
Before Xehanort could say more, Ienzo snatched the book off the ground and fled, shoes smattering. Stitch made a shout, and leaped in his direction. After a couple of steps, he turned around, looking at Xehanort and pointing towards the path which Ienzo had taken off on.  
“Iezo seva koja!”  
Go to him then, Xehanort urged within his mind and inclined his head toward X indicate that he couldn’t simply leave. Snorting, Stitch turned around and continued running.  
As he watched the blue streak exit the garden, Xehanort wondered when he’d last seen Ienzo display emotions that openly, then turned to X, finding her looking down onto her knees, hands clutching the fabric of her pant. With small movements, she had somehow completely curled in on herself.  
“Please don’t let his reaction get to you. I have told Ienzo many times that you’re as harmless as any other person.”  
A shake of the head; X gathered the feathers on her lap and rose to her feet.  
“Can we return inside? I’m cold” she said, her head turned away from him.  
With a sigh, he nodded.  
She didn’t need any more admission than that to turn her back as well and stride away; he followed.  
Left on the bench, forgotten or abandoned by the garden’s visitors laid a single crow feather with a crushed tip and an enclosed dandelion.


	3. Chapter 3

That night the sight of the moon entranced. It rose just above the rooftops, streaked both yellow and red as if bleeding, and full to the point where it looked like color burst outside of its corners. The sky itself seemed intent on enhancing the enigmatic spell, shrouds of clouds clothing the moon’s lower half like the ghostly rags of a wicked and beautiful enchantress.  
Thought-forgotten superstition of old came back to the people on nights such as this, bringing them back to times of cowering peasants who listened to ghouls howling outside their shacks and wondered whether the light bobbing up and down in the darkness was a lantern or a will-o-wisps.  
This was not what Xehanort felt however. When he gazed at the moon he experienced exhilaration, travelling from the nape of his neck down to his legs. The people in town had locked both doors and windows tight as if darkness was something that could be barred entry by wood and glass; he wanted to run into it, run far away and without direction until he reached a place where he nothing and nothing knew him.  
The very moon that caused such feeling was paradoxically rooting him in the spot at the same time, lulling him into a trance.  
So far he’d compared X and other darklings to cats and their yellow eyes to gemstones, but this moon would probably be the closest likeness he could ever find: Black upon ebony yellow; shadows framing a dark light.  
He forced himself away from the window; if he dallied he would become late to his own experiment. The sleeping halls of the castle swallowed the faint rustle of his stepps, making his passage that of a breathing shadow. He moved downwards, to parts of the castle’s underground layers that not even the king knew about. Many a predecessors had built upon the net of secret hallways, disclosing their secret locations in crumbling records that had been stashed away long before computers were invented.

Braig and Dilan had already brought Mikeal down to their personally crafted operation chamber, sedated and fastened to a table by broad leather straps that ran across chest, hip and knees.  
“Good evening,” he smiled at them and received a smirk from Braig that spoke of mounting enthusiasm, his gloved hands twitching upon the syringes. Glum in comparison, Dilan only glanced his way without a word. Prominent shadows beneath his eyes told Xehanort that he likely hadn’t slept well since the last experiment, still his jaw was set in determination to see the night through.  
Come morning, Mikeal’s cell lacked an inhabitant.

“Are you certain that you don’t want to take a day’s leave?”  
Ansem the Wise’s deep and melodious voice was poignant with concern.  
“I don’t see why I should. He did me no harm,” Xehanort replied, resisting the urge to scrub his palms across his naked shoulders.  
Since he had walked into Ansem’s study straight from the medical bay, the only thing covering him was a thin shirt, and he found himself distractingly chilly.  
“An harrowing experience such as that can leave wounds that aren’t visible to the eye,” was Ansem’s reply.  
Xehanort let his lips tug upward into a smile that scolded his master for thinking him easily rattled. He hoped it could mask that, on some level, the words struck a chord. Having a man go from sitting docile in his cell, seemingly lost in thought, to screaming and leaping at him, was not an event he would forget, though not because it had frightened him.  
Nobody knew how the man had gotten a hold of a sharp object – Negligence among the guards? Talin, as his name was, had always acted complacent. Despite having worked as a farmer in the past and having enough muscle to pull a cart as well as any freight horse, he had been considered harmless for this reason. When he snapped, Xehanort had felt like a man being cornered by a grizzly.  
Afterwards he couldn’t remember what the weapon had been: A nail, broken glass, a shaving knife ... His mind had conjured only a single thought (Sharp) as the object aimed towards his gut, then his body had moved as if reciting a well practised choreography, kicking the man’s lags out from underneath him, sweeping around him as he fell, placing all his weight on his back and limbs, twisting his wrist to make him drop the weapon and pressing him down until Aeleus and Even came running.  
Aeleus had hugged him, prompting him to gasp out of both surprise and the strain put on his ribcage, and Even had escorted him to the medical bay despite him insisting that he hadn’t suffered a scratch.  
“You shouldn’t have gotten out of that uscattered,” had been Even’s response.  
Words that rang true. It was miraculous that a man who hardly spent time outside the library, the labs or in front of a computer screen, hadn’t gotten every bone in his body mangled. Yet he had unarmed a man like it had been the most natural action in the world, reacting as fast as guards who spent years honing their reflexes. The images of what had transpired rippled endlessly throughout his head, echoed and scratched away his senses until he couldn’t feel the floor he walked across.  
Perhaps Even had noticed this, hence why he insisted that he needed to rest. Being idle when there was work to be done had never been something he could bear for long however. Questions could wait ‘till evening. He’d headed to Ansem’s office to inform aforementioned that he wished to resume his duties.  
Before he could, it seemed he would need to sit through Ansem apologizing about the event as if he personally had been the attacker. The man rambled on about reforming security and keeping a closer eye on patients’ mental state – Never again missing an abrupt increase of aggressiveness, while Xehanort remained tight lipped about knowing the likely reason behind Talin’s transition from a well mannered to froothing and screaming. Not long ago the man in question had taken part in one of his late-night experiments.  
“I was going to visit X next, she will hardly attack someone”, he said, when Ansem once again mentioned how he would prefer it if he took a day’s leave.  
Ansem sighed.  
“You’ve taking a liking to her.”  
Xehanort hoped he didn’t flinch.  
“I try to not make it too apparent. She is a more engaging company than most other patients.”  
“Ienzo told me that he spotted the two of you in the garden.”  
This time there was no suppressing the reaction. For a moment Xehanort expected to see the reprimanding expression that always made him feel like an yet-to-be-apprenticed amnesiac again, the one that Ansem caught in restricted areas, blending volatile, magical potions together out of curiosity. Ansem huffed with amused laughter.  
“No need to look like I’m going to put you in a garrote. I trust your judgement, and said as much to Ienzo. That you tried to make X’s situation more bearable was kind.”  
Kind? Genius and prodigy were compliments that fell over him like raindrops, but kind was a first. Finding that he had no idea how to respond, Xehanort stood up.  
“Might I be allowed to take my leave then, master?”  
“If you wish. May the rest of your day prove more pleasant.”  
Xehanort nodded, then left the study. Outside he spotted a familiar blue creature, sniffing at the wall.  
“Good day Stitch,” he said to him. “I’m heading down to the dungeon. Are you interested in coming with?”  
He crouched, expecting the other to climb up to his shoulder. Stitch startled and turned around, staring widely at him, then his ears pressed flat backwards and he uttered a warning growl.  
“Stitch?”  
He did not stop growling, eyes narrowed and hackles raised. With a snap of his teeth, as if he was a guard dog threatening an intruder not to get near, he turned and ran down the hallway. Xehanort looked after him.  
“Suppose, he’s simply in a strange mood today,” he muttered.

“Was there fighting earlier?”  
“Problems with one of your neighbors. Nothing awful.”  
The side-eye X cast him may or may not have shown skepticism. With her stoic facade applied like morning make-up, it was a challenge to tell for sure. The visit to the garden the day before had caused her to open up far more than what was normal, and, seeing her now, he wondered if some of it had simply been his imagination projecting.   
What had changed today?  
The table was standing on a new spot, propped against the bed with more paper than he’d known she owned spread across it. The cat sculpture was standing in the middle to perhaps act as a paperweight or a model for sketching. When he craned his neck to peek at the scribbles he found that it was not drawing that she was occupied with.  
“Is that my name?”  
“What?”  
“Which you have been writing down.”  
“Ah, that.”  
She walked over to the table and turned around the uppermost paper for him to see clearly. His name had indeed been put there, the letters boldly sketched, beside other names that he recognised as belonging to other residents of the castle: Even, Ansem, Ienzo, Aeleus ... Cluttered beneath them were a collection of letters that formed for the most part formed impossible to pronounce nonsense.  
“Word scrambles” she explained.  
“You usually read.”  
“Before we head into that discussion, could you tell me about Ienzo? Have you talked to him?”  
“Not personally, but Ansem the Wise has seen him. According to him he is acting like normal. You won’t have traumatized him simply by him seeing you.”  
“I see … You asked about these scrambles. Well, Stitch gave me an idea yesterday. Finding new meanings in words and names: I think I … enjoyed doing stuff like that to pass the time.”  
“That’s a valuable discovery. Did you also give thoughts to his name suggestion?”  
“It annoys me,” she said.  
“Annoys you?  
“Yes”.  
Movements as fluid as a cat, she sat down on the chair, hair falling back. Her unobscured eyes regarded the ceiling as if having decided to make it crumble with only her gaze.  
“In which why does it annoy you?” he asked.  
She sucked on her lips in thought for a while.  
“Despite all of encouraging me to pick my own new name, I decided to keep calling myself what you named me, rather than replacing what my original name was, then Stitch proposes a compromise: I simply have to pronounce “X” in this ancient language and it will be just like a proper name. Everyone will be satisfied — All of you anyway.” She gestured with her hands in front of herself, expression asking him to grasp a concept that there were no simple words for. “It doesn’t truly solve the core of what my issue was — Do you understand me?”  
“That is what annoys you?”  
“No, what really annoys me is that I like Stitch’s idea. Calling myself the same thing as an object people open doors with shouldn’t feel tempting just because he presented me with a loophole of logic.”  
“Have you considered that it might not be that you are easily swayed, rather you are tempted because it was a good friend who did the swaying. As far as I know, Stitch is the only one here that you seem completely relaxed around.”  
She gave him a look that told him he was being stupid. Xehanort wondered if he was, or if the expression was a mask to hide that she actually considered his idea a sound insight. Whatever the case, the look was enough for him to change the subject.  
“Can I see any anagrams that you have made with my name. I admire the commitment of someone willing to scramble “Xehanort”.  
She snorted, before pushing one of the paper toward him.  
“I had to give up on the “X” eventually. Once I did, I managed to wring out interesting results.”  
He leaned forward.  
“No Heart”, he read aloud the one word circled on the paper, frowning.  
“Let’s hope the parents who named you were unaware of that.”  
Joking again?  
Debating with himself whether she expected him to acknowledge that she had a sense of humor or pretend like nothing, ended with him simply humming in response. No Heart. With how many times he’d thought of himself as a callous person, prioritizing cold reason over emotion, the acronym struck him as the universe pulling a prank.  
“You can also spell “No Earth”, and “Another”, X continued, flipping the paper around and pointing.  
It was amusing to find out that his name could hide many meanings, he supposed.  
“Guess I have a few options now, if I ever decide to try calling myself something other than Xehanort.“  
Her eyes widened.  
“No. I didn’t show you these to force you to pick a new name.”  
“Stitch’s loophole of logic does apply to this, no? I’m not technically abandoning my dirty rug if I use its thread to create something new and better.”  
“Why would you even latch on to this idea? It’s a stupid one” she said, deflating.  
“I figured since we are in the same boat essentially ... If you decide to try calling yourself “Key” from now on, I might as well accept a nickname of my own.”  
When X’s scowl had accused him of idiocy earlier, it had hardly been serious; now she looked at him as if she wondered if he really was dumb.  
She tilted her head.  
“Earth”, she said, her gaze scanning him while she tried the word in her mouth, what it sounded like calling him by it.  
“Another.”  
When her gaze was focused and inscrutable, her yellow eyes seemed to open up everyone and everything like a door, and he supposed he would never get used to the feeling. The spell broke the moment her her lips tugged downward and made clear her final assessment.  
“This is ridiculous, please don’t do this to yourself,” her tone begged him to tell her that he was only joking.  
Xehanort wondered if he was. There was poetry in calling himself something like “Another” (Not “Xehanort”, but “Another”) but he would be lying if he claimed the thought didn’t feel strange, like putting on a suit without being sure the color or size suited him.  
On the other hand, he, for once, felt hardly bothered about integrity, and couldn’t help but think back to his own words about considering certain suggestions solely because of the person the came from. That brought a smirk to his face.  
“We could do it as an experiment. If you would let me call you “Key”, you can call me “Earth” or “Another”. Wouldn’t it be easier to tell if the names fit us if we get the chance to try them out?”  
Her gaze narrowed, asking him if he had planned the conversation to lead into this direction, then she sighed, resigned.  
“I suppose I can’t be bullheadish in this matter forever. Do you really like it better than "Xehanort"?  
"Perhaps it is a name I must learn to let go of."  
She put her elbow down at the table, and her expression showed a hint of coyness.  
“You calling me “Key” sound far too strange, though Try saying “Kai” instead”.


End file.
